Turning Point

by Michael Veitch

  Calmly, Davidson directed Hazell to steer away from the ship – though not too abruptly – and make for the darkness as quickly as possible. Corporal Bradford recalled of the incident that they were, in effect, ‘leading the enemy navy to the common destination. Our quick-thinking helmsman put us ashore, having come dangerously close to a large, unfriendly and well-laden enemy troop transport.’

  •

  After the commotion of the skirmish on the water, it was Captain Moji’s turn to go ashore, aboard a barge loaded with rations. Standing on a sack of rice at the bow, he saw a small beach emerge from the darkness. The shoreline was teeming with men. Korean labourers, working naked in water up to their waists, had already built a rudimentary jetty from sandbags, and equipment of all sorts was piling up beyond the waterline. As the barge slowed, Moji leaped off, sword in hand, into water up to his knees. Instantly the boat was set upon by an army of labourers, who seemed neither to notice nor care for his elevated rank, hauling off the sacks of rations and adding them to the growing piles on the shore.

  Moji inspected the chaotic stacks of equipment, including the bombs and fuel drums for the aerodrome. But only a few soldiers could be seen, the rest having taken off down a narrow track, hoping to storm the airfield which they assumed to be on the other side of the bushes. Already runners had returned, reporting that, so far, the soldiers had found nothing but jungle.

  One man who did notice Moji was Platoon Commander Mitsumi, who had landed with the initial wave of the Beach Control Unit, and now appeared to be highly agitated. ‘Chief Paymaster,’ he said standing before Moji and offering a low bow of apology. ‘I am very sorry, but this doesn’t seem to be the place we intended to land. We seem to have mistaken the landing point.’

  A sense of dread came over Moji. This, he now knew, was the reason for the quiet reception. They had landed at the wrong place.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE LANDING

  Captain Charles Henry Bicks should not have been at KB Mission the night the Japanese invaded. Strictly speaking, he should not have been in the army at all. He was, according to the rules, too old to fight.

  In the early stages of the war, the government had been happy to allow the ranks of Australia’s militia to continue to be populated by officers of a certain age, many of whom proudly wore ribbons from the First World War on their tunics. Since militia troops could never be sent to fight outside Australian territory anyway, and as the Germans and Italians showed no interest in attacking Australia, their lack of modern leadership was not seen as a problem.

  Charles Bicks would be turning 40 in 1942. He’d been born in England and arrived in Australia as an eighteen-year-old in 1920. In Brisbane he raised a family and built up a career as a Commonwealth meat inspector. Despite several attempts to join the AIF when the war came in 1939, he was passed over for younger recruits, and so settled for the militia, where he earned a commission in the 61st Battalion.

  The looming spectre of Japan, however, forced a change in policy. In mid-1942 it was decreed that 40 years of age would be the cut-off for militia officers to serve in the field; the brutal conditions of the tropics were considered too strenuous for older bodies. In any case, the militia ranks were now being bolstered by young officers who had combat experience in the Middle East. Still determined to serve, however, some older officers fudged their ages to the authorities, becoming known as ‘the thirty-nine liars’.

  As a man of integrity, the 40-year-old Bicks decided on a more open approach, appealing directly to the 61st Battalion’s notoriously strict commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Meldrum. Desperate to serve in action, Bicks declared himself as fit as any younger officer the CO could name and requested special dispensation to serve in the field.

  So impressed was Meldrum by the man’s spunk that not only did he accede to his request, he put him in command of a company. The appointment proved a wise one. Bicks showed himself to be a leader fine enough to be awarded the Distinguished Service Order, and it was his B Company which bore the brunt of the Japanese spearhead on the first night of the battle.

  In the days before the invasion, Bicks’ men had been dug in around the Koebule (or KB) Mission, a series of neat Papuanstyle huts in a cleared area intermingled with a mix of rubber and coconut plantations, prettily positioned by the shore. When warning was received that the Japanese fleet was near, Bicks sent smaller patrols further east along the track, one of them a fourteen-man section from 11 Platoon, under the command of another capable infantry officer, 31-year-old Lieutenant Herbert Robinson. Robinson was used to the bush, having once been employed in the Queensland forest area of Imbil as a ‘saw doctor’, or sharpener.

  On the night of 25 August, two miles up the track from KB Mission, at a creek junction called Cameron Springs, Robinson and his men crouched in the rain and the darkness, listening to the distant sounds of the firing and boat engines from the direction of Ahioma as the skirmish with the Bronzewing played out. Finally, they all thought to themselves, the longanticipated battle had arrived.

  Robinson had chosen his position well, under a spur of the plunging Stirling Range, where it runs down to meet the Government Track. On the spur itself he had placed a man with a Bren light machine gun; further along the track, Private Walther Whitton stood as a forward sentry. He was certain the Japanese would soon arrive at his position, and was determined, if even for a short time, to control it.

  In silence, the men kept their eyes on the track through the jungle and the mangroves, listening to the sounds of the barges, and the distant firing, which soon faded. Many were aware that their D Company comrades were somewhere on the far side of the Japanese landing area, and that they too could be coming this way. The appalling possibility of firing into the dark and hitting one’s own was real.

  At about 1 a.m., Whitton heard rustling and footsteps as four shadowy figures approached along the track. Instead of immediately withdrawing to report to Robinson, the inexperienced militiaman raised his rifle and issued a verbal challenge: ‘Halt! Who goes there?’

  The challenge received no answer, but only a short pause followed by a series of gunshots from advancing Japanese scouts. Whitton dropped down dead into the mud. Behind him, the remainder of Robinson’s platoon opened fire, killing the four Japanese. Robinson, cursing, dragged Whitton’s body into the bush and ordered his men to deploy themselves on both sides of the track for an ambush. The 26-year-old bank clerk from Brisbane became the first Australian to die in the fight for Milne Bay.

  Twenty minutes later, more – many more – feet and voices were heard approaching. Even now, their identity caused hesitation, and Robinson, loath to risk firing at his own men, even committed the sin of calling out to them; it seemed to go unheard. As a hundred or so Japanese appeared on the track, they pulled up around the four dead marines at their feet, seemingly unconcerned that the men who had shot them could still be in the area.

  Now Robinson did not hesitate, and at his shout of ‘Fire!’ the Bren gun on the spur opened up on the centre mass of the gathered bodies. Some Japanese fell, but the rest scattered and began their standard outflanking manoeuvre – pushing deep into the forest and working their way around to an enemy position – which had proved so devastating to Commonwealth forces in Malaya. Some took off towards the northern, mountain side of the Government Track, while other marines entered the water. Holding their rifles above their heads, they waded around to outflank Robinson’s men from the south.

  The Japanese on the northern side soon came under fire from the man Robinson had put behind the Bren gun, Private Latorre, but eventually overwhelmed him. He was never seen again. Robinson saw the trap being set and withdrew 200 yards back up the track to another defensive position, but in the confusion his small party became fragmented. One group of three men vanished, while Sergeant Don Ridley and Private Frank Fraser became surrounded. Ridley had taken a bullet in his thigh, and Fraser was also slightly wounded.

  The two men crawled to each ot
her in a small patch of clearing, with Japanese soldiers around them in the darkness. ‘Got any ideas?’ asked Ridley. They discussed various ways of getting back to Robinson’s position, but each seemed impossible. Finally, Sergeant Ridley made the only suggestion he could think of: ‘Lie doggo. It’s our only chance’.

  Adopting a suitably corpse-like posture, the two men lay on the jungle floor until the firing died down and the Japanese approached. Ridley heard footsteps close by, then nothing. The weight of a boot was placed on his back, then he felt the searing pain of a bayonet entering his thigh. Convinced he was living his last moments, he somehow managed to suppress his agony, keeping his body prone. After some brief but terrifying seconds, the Japanese soldier answered a command, and could be heard heading off into the bush to rejoin his detachment.

  Remaining still for as long as he could manage, Ridley slowly looked around, and to his amazement saw Fraser looking back at him. ‘Christ, you’re alive too!’ was all they could say to each other. Neither could understand how they’d survived the ordeal.

  After applying a field dressing to Ridley’s wounds, the two men moved away from the track and up the slope towards the ranges, where, in a patch of open scrub, they observed a group of about 40 men making their way west. Initially wary, they soon recognised Australian uniforms and joined the group: it was the stragglers of D Company returning from Ahioma. All managed to avoid the Japanese, and made it safely back to Gili Gili.

  It was reported afterwards that Fraser’s hair turned white virtually overnight. Sergeant Ridley’s wife testified years later that her husband was haunted by his near-death experience for the rest of his life.

  •

  In his new position, 200 yards west of the ambush, Lieutenant Robinson counted his casualties and tried to assess the strength of the Japanese force which had landed. But, as would occur throughout the battle, the ability to accurately determine numbers and situations was swallowed up by night and the jungle. As Robinson would learn, this was to be a battle fought in the shadows, amid short bursts of sudden violence where men on both sides had little idea what was happening around them; of surreal images of figures clutching rifles, briefly illuminated by a flare or a gunflash before they dissolved again into the darkness.

  At around 2 a.m., one such surreal image presented itself when Robinson caught the approaching sound of an engine and the grinding of metallic tracks. A piercing light broke the darkness, then, to his horror, a tank rolled into view, making its way steadily towards his position, firing a machine gun into the jungle on both sides of the Government Track. This was the first of the two Type 95 Ha-Go infantry tanks brought in the holds of the Nankai Maru, the first Japanese tanks to be landed in the entire New Guinea campaign.

  Advancing behind the tank’s powerful single headlight, Japanese infantry could be made out, walking four abreast. The tank would move ahead, firing its 7.7-millimetre machine gun to clear the path, then stop or even back up to rejoin the infantrymen. With no answer to this new threat, Robinson could only withdraw towards B Company’s main position at KB Mission.

  The tank approached to within a hundred yards, then Robinson ordered his men to open up with their automatic weapons. The tank fired back blindly into the dark, then paused. Now Robinson took his chance to pull back. All night this pattern was repeated: every few hundred yards, a stand would be made, and gunfire directed towards the advancing Japanese, who would stop briefly before consolidating again.

  Eventually, the Japanese brought up their mortars, and the sound of explosions combined with gunfire. Robinson was thankful of the darkness, which concealed the size of his pitifully small group from the enemy, who were undoubtedly convinced they were facing a much larger force.

  •

  At KB Mission, the sounds of battle could clearly be heard, and were getting louder by the minute. The sinister rumbling and revving of the Japanese armour also now drifted through the darkness, above the noise of the incessant rain. An hour or so before dawn, however, it seemed the entire world had become one giant conflagration as the mission was lit up by a huge sheet of orange flame, followed by a thunderous explosion in the jungle to the north. If there were any still unaware of the Japanese landing, the warships’ barrage left no room for doubt that the battle was now on.

  As was to become a pattern during the next ten days, the night would belong to the Japanese, while the daylight was the realm of the Allies. Every evening, the Japanese warships, making full use of their nocturnal immunity from air attack, would enter the bay, treating the waters as their own, and attack the Allied positions. Before dawn, however, they would slip out and disappear, relying on the open ocean’s murky gloom to hide them from the defenders’ aircraft.

  On this first night of the battle, the cruisers laid off Gili Gili, while the destroyers aimed their guns at KB Mission, almost close enough for the muzzle flashes to reach the shore. Fortunately for Milne Force, the Japanese naval gunners’ accuracy was consistently poor, their proximity to their targets actually hampering their aim. Unable to lower their trajectory sufficiently to cause great damage, the vast majority of the shells wheeled over both Gili Gili and KB Mission, exploding harmlessly in the scrub and jungle beyond.

  At KB Mission the barrage was brief but terrifying, particularly when heard by the wary remnants of Lieutenant Robinson’s platoon as they approached, with the Japanese not far behind. Making their way over the little bridge bordering the mission’s eastern boundary at Eakoeakoni Creek, the Australians might have felt some relief at being out of the jungle. Exhausted, they filed onto the lawns surrounding the neatly built thatch-roofed huts.

  A brief consultation between Robinson and Captain Bicks revealed the situation to the company commander for the first time. Robinson thought the open spaces of the mission to be indefensible, and that a withdrawal to a stronger position was required. This would be to the far bank of the Haumo River, several hundred yards to the west of the mission’s boundary.

  Like a pursuer that refuses to be shaken off, the rumble of the Japanese tank could be heard approaching along the Government Track to the east. Although exhausted, Lieutenant Robinson and a handful of his men doubled back through cover to observe their advancing enemy, closing to within 150 yards of the Ha-Go tank as it prepared to negotiate the narrow wooden bridge.

  Like many men of the 61st Battalion, Robinson had grown up around Queensland’s Darling Downs, and was well used to handling hunting rifles; indeed, he was renowned as one of the battalion’s better shots. Now, he lifted his .303 rifle and adjusted its sight, just as the Japanese tank driver raised his head and shoulders above the hatch to navigate the narrow bridge. Robinson squeezed the trigger and, amazingly, his shot struck the man in the head, killing him instantly. The tank lurched off the bridge, landing nose-down in the mud below. Robinson’s marksmanship would hold up the enemy’s advance, but not for long.

  In the east, the first brushes of light grey appeared in the sky. At Gurney Field, some miles away, the aircraft engines roared to life. The sound reverberated along the northern section of coastline that morning, bringing hope and comfort to the men of the 61st Battalion. Further east, at the rear of their position near their landing areas, the Japanese heard it too, pausing in their tracks to take in its implication. News from their forward soldiers had been scant, but now the question of whether the invasion timetable had been met – it required the Allied airfield to be stormed and captured before dawn – was answered emphatically in the negative.

  It was now time for the Kittyhawks to join the Battle of Milne Bay.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE KITTYHAWKS STRIKE

  Just when the RAAF pilots and airmen at Gurney Field believed that no more rain could possibly be wrung from the sky, it turned on a deluge like nothing seen before. In the two days prior to the battle, they recorded over a foot and a half, and the runway reached the point where it seemed to be suspended over a sea of mud. Men bounced on it as if walking across a trampoline, and the ma
keshift methods the engineers devised to clear the seeping goo were stretched to their limit.

  The tension of the living conditions and the inaction was taking its toll. The Japanese had been expected for weeks, and eventually the pilots’ adrenaline had begun to stale. The Zeros had appeared sporadically to strafe and attack, but the men were desperate to get their hands on the enemy, particularly as their living conditions, in Southall’s words, were devolving ‘to a mere existence of mud and muck and misery’.

  Squadron Leader Keith Truscott, who had been unlucky enough to be rostered off flying duties on each of the occasions the enemy had made an appearance, was known to relieve his frustration by simply taking off in his Kittyhawk, unannounced and alone, and flying around – sometimes for hours. Where he flew and what he did was never discovered. Perhaps he did it simply to buy himself some time in the cooler air, away from the mud and the heat, and especially the snakes, spiders and other tropical crawlers, which he particularly loathed.

  All this changed, however, the morning the Japanese barges pulled up onto the beach at Goodenough Island, offering themselves as target practice for the Kittyhawk pilots. Finally, the men knew, the battle was coming – and they were ready for it.

  In the early hours of 26 August, 75 Squadron’s Pilot Officer ‘Buster’ Brown was awake, serving as duty officer at Gurney Field, listening to the sounds of mortar and machine-gun fire several miles away up the Government Track. At any moment he expected the telephone to ring, but for now he was happy to let the men sleep. Over the next few days, he suspected, there would be very little of it to be had.

  The quiet came to an abrupt end around 2 a.m. as a screeching whine passed overhead, followed by a tremendous explosion some way off. The guns of the Japanese cruisers had opened up, probing for the airstrip. Brown grabbed the telephone receiver and managed to contact 75 Squadron’s commander, Les Jackson, to ask if he’d heard it.